Mallikarjun Kharge’s projection as the prime ministerial candidate of the Indian National Developmental Inclusive Alliance (INDIA) was not a sudden, spur-of-the-moment decision at the December 19 meeting of the Opposition parties. Many alliance parties including the Congress leadership had been toying with the idea.
Both Sitaram Yechury of CPM and Manoj Kumar Jha of the RJD publicly batted for Kharge to play a bigger role in the coalition and beyond. At a book launch at the Rajiv Gandhi Foundation on December 11, 2023, Sonia Gandhi virtually endorsed Yechury and Jha saying, “Mallikarjun Kharge is best suited to lead the Congress party in this historic battle for India’s soul. In this, he has my steadfast support and that of the Congress party.”
But has Kharge got the right credentials to be at 1, Lok Kalyan Marg if INDI alliance calculations and strategy indeed checkmates Narendra Modi-led NDA in May 2024? Kharge has had an impressive track record in public life, rising from the Bloc president of the grand party to the 88th president of the AICC. He has been elected a record 11 times and has been a multi-term minister in Karnataka and the Union cabinet. Kharge also holds the distinction of being the leader of the Opposition in both houses of Parliament. On his part, Kharge, who has had a long and distinguished career in public life, had been devoting considerable time commenting and deliberating upon the Modi government’s functioning, contrasting its past and alleging that under Narendra Modi, the locus of power has effectively shifted from the cabinet to the Prime Minister’s Office.
In a new book titled, The Great Indian Manthan, State, Statecraft and The Republic (Penguin Random House), Kharge has contributed a chapter, “The Cabinet: A Check on Authoritarianism”. In his sharp article, he accuses the BJP-led Opposition of purposely vilifying Dr Manmohan Singh as a ‘weak’ prime minister during the 2004-2014 UPA government years. Kharge, who was a minister under Dr Singh, alleges that the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), then in Opposition, teamed up with the ‘deep state’ to portray Manmohan as ‘weak’. He doesn’t define what this ‘deep state’ is but the threat of infiltration in key government institutions is something the United States, China, Canada, United Kingdom and most developed nations take very seriously. Does Kharge know something that only prime ministers of the past knew?
Kharge also says when Manmohan Singh resumed his stint as prime minister in 2009, “the key levers of power suddenly stopped functioning”. The reasons became clear when he demonstrated that many who sabotaged the system from within joined hands with the BJP, which subsequently rode to power under Narendra Modi. He goes on to allege that “even though he (Prime Minister Modi) publicly promised to correct the perceived (and frankly manufactured) flaws that had crept into the institution of the cabinet and the prime minister, it soon became clear that the new dispensation was not correcting mistakes but taking them to the other extreme. The principles of collective responsibility in government have sadly been ignored.”
Kharge then goes on to demonstrate that post-independence, Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru established precedents to institutionalise a cabinet form of government that every prime minister (including Prime Minister Vajpayee) has followed. But these norms and conventions have been flouted under Modi. As an example, he says “One glaring indicator of this is the dismissal of EGoMs [Empowered group of Ministers] and GoMs as soon as the ruling dispensation assumed power in 2014. This was purportedly done because they contributed to the much touted ‘policy paralysis’. This logic was flawed because EGoMs and GoMs provided the cabinet with detailed information on subjects entrusted to them and in the process, enabled better policymaking. In abolishing EGoMs and GoMs, the NDA government has undermined informed and inclusive decision-making”.
The decline of the cabinet form of governance worsened further when ministries were merged to create even more centralisation. Kharge points at the corporate affairs ministry merger with finance on the one hand, and housing and urban poverty alleviation with urban development on the other as a pointer. He argues that “this has been purportedly done to further the goal of ‘minimum government, maximum governance’ but in effect, this seemingly innocuous move centralized powers in the PMO.” Kharge pulls out a statement released by the Modi government which said, “Wherever the Ministries face any difficulties, the Cabinet Secretariat and the Prime Minister’s Office will facilitate the decision-making process” to make the case that the PMO has become a “leviathan”.
Without mentioning Union Ministers S Jaishankar, Ashwini Vaishnaw, Hardeep Puri or RK Singh, Kharge laments that the appointment of bureaucrats and technocrats as ministers, eschewing the earlier practice of having political heavyweights as ministers, has led to the decline of the cabinet system. He posits “While it could be argued that this infuses technical expertise within the government, this has grave implications for India’s social contract. Earlier, ministers were chosen because they had deep ties to specific groups—to communities, to sectoral interest groups, to academics/think tanks, to the diaspora, to civil society, etc.—apart from administrative experience. Their connections were leveraged to engage in a sustained dialogue with India’s diverse interest groups, to ensure that governance was more people-centric. Today, only the PMO is permitted to engage with all of India’s interest groups. In this construct, the Prime Minister is no longer first among equals, but the sole Chief Executive, like that in the United States of America. The morphing of the PMO into an independent Executive force is a perversion of the cabinet system. When individuals who cannot otherwise get elected begin to disproportionately influence governance, it leads to an oligarchic control of the State apparatus”.
Kharge also claims that Modi’s PMO is a de facto super cabinet that plans, directs and monitors major policies and projects, while the cabinet rubber-stamps decisions. “That is why laws are moved that are not responsive to the true needs and aspirations of the people. This appropriation of ministerial prerogatives and functions has been extended to other spheres of governance as well,” writes Kharge. To substantiate his claim, Kharge cites two examples.
“…Prime Minister Modi has spearheaded a highly personalized form of foreign policy, drawing from past precedents. A case in point is his decision to stop over in Lahore in December 2015 to greet then Prime Minister of Pakistan Nawaz Sharif on his birthday. This effort, supposed to be out-of-the box thinking, ended up undermining years of patient and skilful diplomacy through which India had cornered Pakistan”, claims Kharge pointing that the prime minister’s “campaign” for the leader of another nation (Howdy Trump rally in Texas, USA) and hosting a foreign leader in India for a rally (Motera rally in Gujarat) was highly questionable and improper. Kharge says it was against the grain of the principle of foreign policy and diplomacy, for it is tantamount to interference in the internal affairs of another nation.
Kharge also refers to the devastating earthquake in Nepal, saying there was no need to be so roughshod with Nepal over the Madhesi issue. “Given our ancient cultural, religious and political ties, the earthquake was an opportunity for India to help our dear friends in need and thereby deepen ties with the Nepalese people. Instead, by blockading Nepal on the Madhesi issue, the NDA government has pushed Nepal (the only Hindu nation in the world) into China’s arms,” alleges Kharge.
The Congress president also questions Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s “excessively personalised overtures to President Xi Jinping (as exemplified by meetings in Ahmedabad in 2014, Wuhan in 2018 and Mahabalipuram in 2019).” Kharge concludes by saying that Modi’s efforts have done little to stop China’s efforts to undermine India’s territorial sovereignty. “Worse, PM Modi’s personalised diplomacy has lulled him into passivity. He has refused to condemn and counter Chinese aggression in Ladakh, Doklam and Arunachal Pradesh. In personally displaying weakness, PM Modi has compromised India’s standing and image. Therefore, it must be said, that every Prime Minister needs to remember that friendships are between nations, not leaders. Personal political interests can never supersede the national interest,” writes Kharge.
Kharge has made a very strong case on how a prime minister should conduct himself and how cabinets should function. He has also made a clear distinction between the BJP and Congress on conduct with allied parties and in government. In this, he has mirrored Sitaram Yechury’s essay in the same book on coalitions. I don’t know if this mirroring was intentional (more likely the book’s editors planned it), but their joint essays of intent would be music to the INDIA parties who have been privately grumbling about how arrogant the Congress’ state leadership has been in the recent state elections.
If one reads the other fine essays in ‘The Great Indian Manthan: State, Statecraft and the Republic’ (edited by Pushparaj Deshpande and Gurdeep Singh Sappal), it’s easy to see the complex challenges any new government in the post-Modi era will face. The way the BJP has allegedly perverted institutions and stuffed them with ideological sympathisers, it will take extraordinary ideological clarity and dynamism to resolve problems, says Kharge. Apart from Kharge, Sonia Gandhi, Hamid Ansari, Sitaram Yechury, Wajahat Habibullah, Justice [retd] Madan Lokur, Margret Alva, Ashok Lavasa, Dr T M Thomas Issac, Dr Naresh Chandra Saxena and Prof Ingrid Sainath have contributed to the book.
While the Modi regime appears to be a favourite to win the 2024 Lok Sabha elections, the Opposition seems to be getting its act together. Deshpande and Sappal provide a credible blueprint for the future.
The writer is a Visiting Fellow at the Observer Research Foundation. A well-known political analyst, he has written several books, including ‘24 Akbar Road’ and ‘Sonia: A Biography’. Views expressed in the above piece are personal and solely that of the author. They do not necessarily reflect News18’s views.
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